Champions Showdown 3: Magnus joins the party

Magnus Carlsen won the final game of the first day to open
up a 5-point lead over Ding Liren as their Champions Showdown match finally
began on Saturday in St. Louis. The other matches had reached the 10-minute
stage, but although Alexander Grischuk was flagged by Fabiano Caruana in an
overwhelmingly won position there was little of the mayhem we’d seen the day
before. Instead Fabiano and Wesley So managed to mount comebacks just when it looked
as though their matches were done and dusted.

World Champion Magnus Carlsen had given a simul in Hamburg,
Germany on Thursday but by Saturday had made it to the Chess Club and
Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. He said he’d slept well, but wasn’t yet
firing on all cylinders:

I feel rested, but there’s really no energy. I’m just happy
to have gotten through this day.

His opponent is Ding Liren, who Magnus had taken as a second
for a week-long training camp in Qatar in 2015 and had handpicked for the
match. He explained why:

I’ve trained with him before and been amazed, frankly, by
his talent. I haven’t been able to play many tournament games with him and I
thought it would be an excellent way to find a new challenge… He has an extreme
calculating ability, he’s very good at judging dynamic positions and he also
has good technique. He doesn’t have many flaws and that’s why he has 2780.

Just a warm-up? Ding Liren's World Cup exploits earned him the chance to fight for a World Championship match against Magnus in next year's Candidates Tournament | photo: Austin Fuller, official website

Their match began with four games where each player had 30 minutes,
and you can replay them using the selector below:

Ding Liren said he’d studied his opponent’s games carefully
and added, “I think my style is a little bit similar”. What he meant perhaps
became clearer in the first game, where Ding Liren had Black in a position that looked
destined to end in a draw, but then imperceptibly he began to outplay his
fearsome opponent. It became critical, and while at first Magnus found an
extremely tricky defence he was objectively lost after playing 46…Bf2:

Magnus’ hopes are based on the pin of the e7-bishop and tactical
tricks such as Bxc5 and then d6, but another pin, 46…Rh2!, would be winning for
Black. Perhaps Ding Liren feared e.g. 47.Kf1 h3 48.Bh4, but it turns out after
48…Rh1+! Black can give up the e7-bishop since the h-pawn will queen.

Instead after 46…Kf6, getting out of the pin, Magnus found
47.Kf1!, giving up the f-pawn, but after 47…Rxf3 48.Kg2 Ding Liren had no better way to prevent Bh4+ than 48…Rg3+, and his pawns were enough for the exchange, but no more. A fierce strategic and tactical skirmish from which both players
could take positives.

In the second game Magnus seemed to win a minor psychological
battle when he offered Ding Liren a pawn which computers saw no reason not to
accept, but the Chinese no. 1 declined and eventually the game was drawn in 85
moves. Game 3 looked like the moment Magnus would take over when his d-pawn
broke clear, but it ended in a strange oversight. Just when Carlsen could have
won a piece he offered a queen trade, which Ding Liren had no choice but to
accept:

The only reason to go for this is that Magnus must have
thought White was winning, so the question is what he missed. Perhaps he hallucinated
that 51.Nf6+ Kh8 52.Rg8 was mate, forgetting the queen on c4 could come back
and take the rook. Or he thought that after 51.Nf8+ Kh8 52.Ng6+ the king had to
come to g7 and the discovered check 53.Nxf4+ would win the game. Of course Liren put his king on h7 and there was nothing better than to repeat
moves.

It could have been a disappointing end to the day for
Carlsen, but there was one more game, and this time Ding Liren played a
reversed Grünfeld and lived to regret tempting a black pawn all the way to d3.
It should still have been defendable, but as Magnus said of the potential draw:

Fortunately he couldn’t quite find the way to clinch it, and
then eventually I got everything I wanted.

It was the backup of the surprisingly fast a-pawn that tipped
the scales, and in the final position White can’t stop both pawns:

You can watch Magnus talking about that game (and relive all of the
Saturday action) below:

As you can see, he was looking forward to the challenge of
faster games on the coming days, and had some harsh words for anyone complaining
about losing on time due to the lack of an increment or delay:

I think there are no excuses… If you want to approach it
like a game with increment and blame other people when you lose on time I’m not
going to have any sympathy with that!

Not quite game over

The other three matches entered the 10-minute stage, but the
expected repetition of the mayhem we’d seen the day before in So-Dominguez
never happened. Perhaps it was because the players had had a stern talking to,
with an instant replay system installed and clear instructions on what was and
wasn’t allowed. You could see Magnus asking some hard questions about what had
happened before his own first game started:

Surprisingly, none of the match leaders, who were all
expected to do better as the time controls shortened, managed to outscore their
opponents. In general, it was a strange day’s play!

You can replay all the games with computer analysis using
the selector below:

The one match that is essentially over is Nakamura-Topalov,
since Hikaru takes a 13-point lead into the final day. Veselin would have to
win seven of the 12 remaining 5-minute blitz games (with 2 points for a win) to
overcome that deficit.

Veselin Topalov summed up his issues with speed chess: "I
like it, but my problem is I’m not good at that!" | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

That didn’t stop the encounter being fun, though, with
the first four games on Saturday all won by the player with the black pieces:

27…f5! was an unusual but instantly winning attack on both
knights by Topalov.

The last four games were then drawn, with Veselin’s spirits boosted as he found a number of great escapes. He summed up, “at least
today I put up some resistance”, while Nakamura gave some good blitz, and general life, advice: “It’s important not to lose your mind!”

US comebacks

The other two matches looked as though they were completely
over at the halfway stage. Perhaps chastened by the events the day before
Wesley So and Leinier Dominguez drew their first four games, and then in the
fifth So was pressing for a win before he played 34.Rd1??

34…Nf3+! 35.Kh1 Qxd1 picked up the rook and left Wesley
trailing by 16 points.

Leinier Dominguez stumbled just when he was about to cross the finish line | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

In the other match Alexander Grischuk won three of the day’s
first four games to take a 13-point lead, and everything that could go wrong
was going wrong for Fabiano Caruana. In Game 3 he had a drawish position it
seemed only he could win, especially as Grischuk was behind on the clock, but
then disaster struck with 52.Rb5??

52…Re1+ was mate-in-2.

In the next game Caruana tried to flag Grischuk in a bad
position, but the Russian kept his wits about him and eventually spotted a way
to win a piece and the game.

Game 5, though, was the moment the day turned. Grischuk got
in some sharp preparation with 6…Bxf2+! and Caruana admitted, “I was just dead
lost for the whole game”. The final position was no exception:

He didn’t lose, though, since Grischuk, in Caruana’s words, “was
hesitating a little too much in a completely winning position”, and finally he lost
control in a time scramble. Alexander is famed for his ability to keep calm and
composed with his time running out, but this wasn’t one of those occasions.
Just watch that rook fly!

Caruana felt that “tilted him a little”, and suddenly from a
position in which Grischuk was about to go 16 points up and essentially decide
the match with a day to spare, he went on to lose three games in a row.
Grischuk only stopped the rot in the final game, though there as well he couldn’t
be entirely satisfied with a draw from a position where he had excellent winning
chances.

Wesley So needs to keep the winning streak going into the final day | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

The same scenario played out in the other match, when
suddenly it was all Wesley So, who went on to win the last three games. Leinier
Dominguez admitted he might have struggled to adapt to success i.e. the
situation where the match was almost over, but he also had a more basic
explanation:

I don’t think fatigue was an issue. I wasn’t playing very
well today. I was under pressure for the whole match - even the game I won I
got really lucky… I think Wesley was playing well today and way faster than me.

Suddenly the resilience of Dominguez under pressure had
gone, and for instance 46…Rc8? was a simple tactical mistake:

The e6-bishop has been left en prise, but of course the
rooks are also eyeballing each other. The fly in the ointment? 47.Bc5+!, and
since Wesley would just be able to take the bishop next move Dominguez had to
give up the exchange with 47…Rxc5. There was no saving the game.

It wasn’t the Cuban’s best day, but in general he’s
impressed Wesley So, who chose him and later seemed to regret it!

Before coming to this match I didn’t realise that Dominguez
is this strong… There are probably easier opponents out there.

Wesley noted that he still has “a tough uphill battle to
climb” on the final day, so let’s take a look at the scores and how they were
calculated. Note there were 5 points for a win in the 30-minute games, 4 in the
20-minute games, 3 in the 10-minute games and finally 2 for a win in each of
the 5-minute games on Sunday:

Despite the bad end to the day Grischuk still retains the
4-point lead he gained on Day 2, meaning Caruana needs to win two more blitz
games than his opponent. Nakamura, as we noted, is already home and dry unless
Topalov pulls off an utterly sensational demolition of an opponent considered a
much better blitz player than he is. It also is, as So noted, going to be an
uphill struggle for him, since the 7.5-point gap means he needs to win an extra
four games to take the $60,000 winner’s prize in his match against Dominguez.

Jennifer and Yasser will again have the tough task of commentating on games operating on different schedules as three of the matches end on Sunday while the other just gets going | photo: Austin Fuller, official website

The fast and furious 5-minute games will be accompanied by
six 20-minute games for Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren, whose match continues on
Monday and Tuesday. Watch all the action with commentary from Yasser Seirawan, Jennifer Shahade and Maurice Ashley here on chess24: US stars | Carlsen vs. Ding Liren.

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